Born for the Slaughter
by attackfishscales
Summary: In Azkaban Prison, on June 21st, 1994, Bellatrix Lestrange gave birth to two children, Zuko and Azula. They were immediately taken out of their mother's custody, and in due course, some years after the war, they come to Hogwarts.
1. Just After the Feast

**Author's Note:** This fic is a compendium of all of the various drabbles, meme responses, and assorted works I have written in the Hufflepuff Zuko universe. As such, some of the chapters will be very short, and some will be quite long. Each chapter itself is linear, but they are not in chronological order. This work is not entirely a true fusion. The characters from Harry Potter still exist in this universe, and will occasionally show up. This takes place some years after the 2nd Voldemort War and the events of the Harry Potter canon, but before the epilogue.

I frequently take prompts and post universe notes on my tumblr: attackfishscales

* * *

 **September 1st, 2005: First Year**

Zuko was born in Azkaban. Zuko's mum was dead now. If Zuko's mum weren't dead, she would hunt him down and kill him.

He fiddled with the yellow and black tie and kept his head down.

No one knew who his father was. His mum was married, but he didn't know if that even mattered, and now, she wasn't telling anyone. Bellatrix Lestrange's son couldn't even claim to be a Pureblood. It was a disgrace. He felt vaguely ashamed it didn't matter to him.

Zuko clasped his wand in his pocket and fingered the carving on the handle. It was Uncle Iroh's dead son's wand.

Uncle Iroh's dead son had been a Gryffindor. Zuko wondered, feared, that Uncle Iroh was hoping he would be a Gryffindor too.

Never give up without a fight.

He wondered if his mum even knew he existed. She'd been so crazy for so long, and besides, that's what war orphanages were for.

Most people there had families killed by someone named Lestange.

The common room was a bright, sunny yellow that made him crave windows and air. But it was underground. There only thin sad windows hovering near the ceiling to show a band of darkness and starlight. There was nothing but yellow and laughing people.

As a girl flung herself down onto the sofa beside him, it almost toppled over under the force of her. She was tiny. She shouldn't be able to do that. "So what's with the ponytail?" She asked, grabbing it.

Zuko pried her hand off, but her fingers came away with a few black strands. "It's mine!" he yelped.

"Yeah yeah yeah." She folded her arms and propped up her feet on his lap. "So everyone's talking about you."

"Great."

"Stop it." She winked at him, and he squinted, trying to figure out what was wrong with her eyes. "Tonight, you and me are finding a way out of here."

"What?" he stared at her blankly.

She punched his arm. "I hear there are all kinds of secret passages around!"

Zuko pressed himself into the sofa cushions, away from her, his eyes darting over the room miserably before he nodded. She was going to be his friend whether he liked it or not.


	2. Herbology and Parseltongue

**March 6th, 2007: Second Year**

Zuko hated Herbology. Plants were okay, he guessed, and it wasn't like Professor Longbottom was mean. He just couldn't meet Zuko's eyes. Or say his last name.

"Zuko, do you mind helping me carry the fanged geraniums? Azula, get out of the flowerbeds."

He used everybody else's last name. Zuko's sister leapt up and back into her seat, something pressed against her chest.

It might be better if Longbottom _were_ mean. Then Zuko could get angry at him.

"So Zuko." Azula smiled winningly. "I think we should work together don't you?" That was the other thing Zuko hated about Herbology. They had it with the Slytherins, and Azula-

Toph grabbed his arm and yanked him back towards her, dragging his chair across the greenhouse floor. "He's working with me."

"Fine," Azula snapped, and glanced back at her friends. "Ty Lee, we're working together."

"But Mai and I-"

"Ty Lee!"

"Alright, Azula," Ty Lee said quickly. While she beamed and bounced over to her friend, Mai heaved a sigh.

Professor Longbottom cleared his throat. "Now, I'm going to be walking around to see how you're doing. If you need any help, just ask and I'll come right over."

Hand in her pocket, Azula watched Longbottom until his back was turned. "Hey Mai. Mai!"

"What?"

"I have a present for Zuko will you give him it for me?"

Mai eyed her warily. "What is it?"

Azula pulled her hand out of her pocket and threw whatever she had been hiding in it right at Mai. Zuko heard someone yelp, and then Mai scream, and he thought it must have been Mai and his mind had been playing tricks on him, and that he hadn't heard a yelp at all.

The snake Azula had thrown draped over Mai's neck, undulating. "Oh my God Azula!"

Zuko leapt to his feet and pulled his wand out of his robe. "What-"

"No one move!" Professor Longbottom rushed through the rows of tables, drawing his wand. "That's an adder."

"An adder!" Zuko yelled. "That wasn't funny, Azula!"

The whole class turned to him, the snake forgotten. The poisonous snake around his friend's neck just forgotten. Even Professor Longbottom was looking at him. He grabbed the snake and lifted it into the air, and he heard someone whisper, "What jusssst happened?"

"What?" Zuko snarled, gazing around the room. Then he realized he'd shouted out in their twin language, and, no one knew... They never used it in public.

And the worst part was it wasn't even Azula's rule. It was his. The little voice spoke again as the snake crawled into his pocket. "Sssscared." Zuko agreed.

"You're a parselmouth!" the professor said at last.

"What do you mean?" Azula demanded. "He just told me it wasn't funny, and-"

Professor Longbottom frowned and peered at her. "You understood him?"

Azula spread her arms. "Of course I understood him, he-"

"You're a parselmouth too?" Ty Lee squealed. "They're really really rare, that's so..." Then her face fell. "Oh."

Zuko slumped into his seat as the whole class started talking. "Loud," the little voice said from his pocket. Zuko put his book over his head and tried to sink into the table.

He just kept thinking, his mother was the Dark Lord's most loyal follower.

o0O0o

A half an hour later, he and Azula sat in the Headmistress's office, and she was talking about paternity tests and fertility spells.


	3. Over the Summer

**July 11th, 2008: Between Third and Fourth Year**

His button up Muggle shirt pinched, and it was covered in soot, but it would be dark inside, and nobody would notice. Uncle Iroh caught them each, one at a time as they fell out of the floo, wiping dirty faces and disappearing ash off clothes. When it was his turn, Zuko batted him away. "I'm fine, Uncle."

Iroh just flicked his wand, tucking in Zuko's shirt and smoothing his trouser pockets. "Now you are fine."

Azula looked down her nose when Iroh came close. There was a streak of soot running down one cheek, and another from her elbow to her knuckles. She snatched the cloth out of his hands, and turned around to wipe it away, as if she could pretend, if nobody watched her do it, that she had stepped out of the grate looking perfect.

"Everyone have their tickets?" Iroh asked, when Azula handed back the washcloth. They held them up to show him. Aunt Wu said he had spent almost all of May playing with the new computer, and buying the tickets online. Yue said that one of the boys in her year kept going on about how computers were a sinister plot by the Muggles to sap away the vitality of Wizarding culture, and he hadn't shut up until Toph hit him with a spit ball.

There were only eleven of them left, Jin, Song, Haru, Teo, Jet, Yue, Hahn, Hide, and On Ji. And Zuko and Azula. They lined up in a row, and Uncle Iroh counted them and their tickets off before walking in front of them like a mother duck on a pond. The bandage over his eye was stiff and caked with the goo he had to smear on the burn every morning, and he hung back at the end of the queue. Iroh held Azula's hand and made her walk next to him. He had told everybody at Hogwarts that he had used the charm on himself, and they had believed him, but Uncle Iroh didn't, and he didn't believe it when he said he'd cursed it so that it couldn't be healed magically trying to heal it himself. So Azula had to walk in the front, where he could keep an eye on her, and he wasn't letting her do anything anymore.

She was just going to get him back when they got back to Hogwarts.

The theater didn't look like much, and Zuko remembered looking at it when he was little, coming there the first time, thinking, This is what they had to spend all that time on the train and come into London for? What interesting thing could Muggles possibly do there that the Ministry wanted them to learn about so badly?

The usher took his ticket and tore it, waving him inside the gloomy, dusty chamber after the rest. Jet traded seats with Jin so that he didn't have to sit next to Zuko, and Teo got the end seat, his chair in the isle of Zuko's other side, right where Zuko wanted to be, as far from Azula as possible.

It didn't matter. Iroh had let him pick out the play this time.

The audience filed in slowly, and Zuko wanted to yell at the to hurry up for the show to begin. Song and Yue were playing some kind of game with their hands next to him, and he wanted to yell at _them_ to stop. They always did things like that when they went to the theater. They just didn't get it.

When the lights finally dimmed, he stopped being able to breathe, and when the curtain rose and the stage lights blazed to life, he swallowed, and swallowed, trying to unstick his throat. A rush of air filled his lungs. The Duke of Gloucester walked out onto the stage. "Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this sun of York, and all the clouds that lour'd upon our house in the deep bosom of the ocean buried..."

Someday, he wanted to write plays like that, even if nobody could anymore.


	4. Down in the Dungeons

**November 14th, 2008: Fourth Year**

After class, the Potions dungeon emptied quickly. Aang ran out so fast he tripped over the threshold, and had to scramble around, collecting the disorganized odds and ends that fell out of his knapsack. Zuko didn't blame him. He'd never liked Potions, every time he looked up, he saw something dead in a jar sitting on a shelf. But Mai liked Potions, so... um.

He sidled over to her, keeping the unscarred side of his face (the good side of his face) toward her while she corked her bottles of salamander blood and bubotuber pus, and wrapping up packets of sneezewort, wormwood and dead spiders. She tucked them each carefully into a stiff sided case, full of pockets and straps. Ty Lee showed it off for her when her parents gave it to her. "Hey, Mai."

"Hello, Zuko," she answered tonelessly.

He couldn't look at her. "I was, um, kind of wondering, well, uh..."

She curled in on herself defensively. "Spit it out."

Zuko kind of thought he might be sick, but he tried to keep his voice casual and maybe she wouldn't realize how much he wanted this. "WouldyouliketogotoHogsmeadewithme?" He didn't think he had succeeded.

She stared, silent for a few seconds. "What?"

"You heard me!" he snapped back. This was so stupid. He never should have asked her. Why on earth would she want to go out with Azula's idiot brother, You-Know-Who's kid?

"Fine."

"Really?" he blinked. "Great!"

"Don't make a big deal out of it," she said awkwardly, but she looked happy. With Mai, it was hard to tell.


	5. Chip on his Shoulder

**September 1st 2008: Fourth Year**

"You're not a teacher." Zuko looked down his nose at Professor Smith. "You're a bully."

"Detention, Lestrange," the professor said boredly. "Move along. You don't want me to take any points. Your house doesn't like you much as it is."

Zuko's fists clenched, but he left his wand in his pocket. "He's going home on the train tomorrow already. You don't have to scare him like that." He glanced down at the eight-year-old stowaway, glaring back and forth between Professor Smith and Zuko himself. "He's gonna have to come back in a couple of years."

"And that's why he needs to learn now that you don't play with Hogwarts." Professor Smith glanced down at the kid, who was looking at Zuko like he was the dangerous one.

"You're Zuko Lestrange?" the kid spat.

"Yeah," Zuko unclenched his hands and tried to smooth the front of his robe, nervously.

"My brother told me about you," the kid, Sensu's brother, growled like it was supposed to be a challenge. "I don't want any help from You-Know-Who's kid."

"If you're so worried about the kid, you can take him back to the Headmistress, Lestrange." Professor Smith gave him a cruel smirk. "Have fun."


	6. Secret Tunnel

**January 26th, 2009: Fourth Year**

"Well _I_ didn't know they kept an army of animated suits of armor down there." Toph folded her arms and smirked. "Not my fault."

Zuko scowled back at her which she was totally oblivious to. "I don't think anybody else knew either, but most people know better than to go of running down every secret tunnel they come across!"

Toph set her jaw and sat down on the bench, arms still folded. "You didn't have to come."

"Yes I did, you dragged me in with you."

"You could have climbed out again." She shrugged, grinning and spreading her arms wide. "It was only a few feet."

Zuko had seen the look on her face, when the stairstep had vanished, and she had stepped down onto thin air, when she had grabbed his arm reflexively and held onto him as she fell. "Just help me get these seedbeds manured."

She grabbed the spare trowel and pulled it out of the manure with a nice, heavy load. "Admit it, you had fun."

Zuko's good eye bulged. "No I didn't, we had to run for our lives!"

"See?" said Toph triumphantly. "Fun."

"Ugh," Zuko replied. He was on his hands and knees, spreading manure in a greenhouse on a Saturday morning. He didn't want to deal with it.

"Personally, I don't know why they gave us detention," Toph said innocently, blinking her eyes. "They shouldn't leave vanishing staircases like that over tunnels that poor helpless little blind girls like me could have fallen into."

"Give it a rest," he groaned. "Nobody buys that anymore." Except for Zuko, especially when he knew he shouldn't. And there she was, saying the same thing Longbottom and Smith had said to him, about how he didn't have to go with her, and he stood there, unable to tell them yes, yes he did, because Toph was going down that tunnel, and what would she do without him if there was something in the tunnel with her. And she had, needed him, hadn't she? "You lost us a hundred points."

"Hey, I lost us fifty. You lost us the other fifty." She grinned again, wild, and carefree, and unafraid. "Anyway, they should be glad we found those suits of armor before some first year did."

Zuko picked up another trowel full of manure and spread it over the bed. "Most first years aren't stupid enough to poke something they find down a dark corridor with their wand."

The manure hit him right between the shoulder blades.

"You've got to be kidding me," he yelped, grabbing a handful of manure to throw back at her.


	7. Best Friends and Nighttime Wanderings

**October 12th, 2007: Third Year**

Toph startled at the crash, and Zuko grabbed her hand to steady her. She yanked her hand away and punched him with it, but she grabbed the sleeve of his robe right after. Then they heard someone in the dark hiss, "Shh! You're going to get us caught."

Sometimes Zuko swore the reason Toph liked to go exploring with him at night was because it meant he was almost as blind as her, and as she turned toward the voice and dragged him over to it, this felt like one of those times. She shoved the door open with the kind of terrific swing that would have sent it banging into the wall, were it not one of the enormous over-heavy Hogwarts castle doors. As it was, the effect was somewhat lost. "Don't you kids know students aren't supposed to be out of bed at night?"

"You're one to talk," a girl's voice said. Zuko peered over Toph's shoulder at her, and at the boy in the Ravenclaw tie in the room with them. He was stuffing scrolls of parchment into a bag guiltily. Zuko peered through the dark at him. He was pretty sure they shared double Transfiguration together. He thought the kid's name was Aang.

"Yeah, that's kind of the point, it's a joke." Zuko could practically hear Toph rolling her eyes. "So kiddies, whatcha doing in here in the middle of the night? Were you snogging? Zuko, tell me they were snogging."

"I'm pretty sure they weren't snogging," Zuko said.

"So what _were_ you doing?"

"What are _you_ doing out here?"

"Nuh uh, I'm not telling you, you're that American prefect from Gryffindor. I'm not telling you anything.

I'm not American," Katara snapped. "I'm from Canada."

"Same thing," Toph said sagely.

"And I'm not a prefect, I'm a _third year."_

"Could have fooled me, miss goody two shoes."

"We have classes together."

"Really? I don't remember seeing you."

Zuko turned around and let his head rest against the door frame. "Come on, Toph, let's just go."

"No way! I want to know what Sugar Queen and her boy toy are doing in here."

"Boy toy?" Katara demanded, voice rising in indignation.

"You know," Aang said, "You guys might want to keep it down."

"She's trying to start a fight," Zuko told Katara. "She's annoying you. You don't want to give her what she wants do you?"

Toph glowered. "Aww, come on, don't spoil my fun."

Katara stared at them both. "You want a fight? You're trying to pick a fight?"

"Maybe."

Zuko grabbed Toph's arm. "It's one in the morning, come on, let's get back to bed."

"You are no fun," she told him, but she let him lead her back through the door. He waved an awkward goodbye to Katara and Aang before shutting it behind them.

"A bug landed on me in that tunnel, I want a shower," he told her.

"I found about eight down there."

"Uh oh."

"Next time I see Sugar Queen back there, I'm dropping them in her hair."

"Toph!"

"Killjoy."


	8. Best Laid Plans of Witches and Dark Lord

**May 18th, 2008: Third Year**

The thing about being Azula's brother was, Zuko was always waiting for the other shoe to drop for something. There was always something hanging over his head, and when there wasn't, there actually was, he just didn't know about it. So when they stepped out of McGonagall's office that day back in second year, Zuko had waited, barely breathing, too busy wondering how Azula would react to the news that You-Know-Who was their father to really react to it himself.

But she didn't react to it, not then. She had walked down the hall, eyes straight ahead, face wiped free of any expression except her usual self-assurance, as if she hadn't heard anything of any importance. She turned down the corridor to the dungeons, and walked away without even looking at him, as if she were all alone. Zuko had let her. He hadn't wanted to remind her he existed, and give her a target for whatever storm of feeling was gathering within her. His feet had carried him down the hallway, past the kitchens, to his own common room, and he had flopped down on his sofa. Second years didn't have their own sofas that no one else sat on no matter how crowded the common room got. That honor was reserved for seventh years, prefects, quidditch captains, and other important people. Zuko got one two months into his first year, because he was just so special.

He had folded up the note McGonagall had given him, the one saying that he was excused from classes for the rest of the day owing to his need to "process", and stuffed it in his pocket. He had wanted to curl up into a ball, but he had known that if he did that, he would forget to uncurl, and someone would walk in on him like that.

Later that evening, Toph had skipped dinner and raided the kitchens, plopping herself down next to him and passing him a plate full of sponge cake with strawberries and whipped cream. He remembered she had also told him she would pick it up and throw it at him if he didn't eat it and enjoy it. He'd told her he thought she might be doing the comforting thing wrong, but she had told him to shut up and eat.

And then, after that, he had waited, and waited, and waited for his sister to react, to talk to him about it, or yell at him about it, or find some way to blame it on him, or to make him feel worse about it than she did, or _something._ But she didn't. He waited the next day, and the next, until the days became weeks, when the vague dread escalated to panic, and he couldn't seem to think about anything else. The longer Azula waited to blow up, the worse it always was, so Zuko waited, on pins and needles for the storm to break.

Then, the weeks faded into months, and a desperate kind of hope had slowly built within him that this was too big even for Azula, and that there was no storm coming. They had left for the summer, and still Azula had said nothing to him about it. They went back, and still nothing. It wasn't like he was starting to feel safe. There were so many other things Azula had hanging over him, so many other bits of misery she has to inflict, but he had stopped really thinking about You-Know-Who being their father, or, well, no, he thought about that part a lot, but about being afraid of what Azula would do about it. Besides, there were just so many things in between that Azula made him pay for. It was just so easy to forget old worries, when there were so many new ones to replace them.

All this was why at the very end of third year, two weeks before they were supposed to leave for the summer, when he awoke to the unpleasant sensation of his sister's knees jabbing into his ribs, he wasn't thinking about their father being You-Know-Who. Fleetingly, he wondered if this was about getting that question right in Charms that she had missed the period before. "I'msorryIdidn'tmeanto," he began on reflex as he opened his eyes.

"Oh shut up, Zuko." Azula sat down harder on his chest, knocking the air out of his lungs. Then, she just... stood up. Zuko's eyes followed her, peering into the dark, empty common room. She had a book in her hands, with one of her fingers thrust between the pages as a bookmark, and she seemed... It was like she couldn't stand still. She paced back and forth across the floor in front of his sofa, alternately clinging the book to her chest and clenching her hand around it and holding it stiffly down at her side as if she didn't really want to be touching it. Zuko didn't say anything, letting her work out whatever nervous energy was driving her. It was probably better not to interrupt her, lest she turn it on him. Abruptly, she stopped in front of her brother, flipping the book open to the page her finger had marked. "Read this."

"It's two in the morning." As soon as he said it, he knew it was the wrong thing to say. Azula's face twisted into a snarl, and he could see her teeth glinting in the darkness. This right here, this was the reason he had his own sofa in the common room, under which his trunk and Druk's terrarium lived. Azula figured out how to get into the Hufflepuff dorms three weeks into first year, and it only took his former roommates a couple of times to realize they didn't want Azula anywhere near them while they slept, and if Zuko slept in the common room, Azula wouldn't bother with the dorms at all.

They had a VCR and some Muggle VHS tapes at the orphanage, and Uncle set up movie nights during the summer. Last year, he showed them _Jurassic Park_. The bit with the goat tied up in the T-Rex enclosure felt really familiar.

Zuko swallowed, and groped around under the sofa for his wand. When his fingers brushed it, it rolled a little further away from his hand, and before he got a good grip on it, he was afraid it was going to roll off the top of his trunk and into that gap between the trunk and the wall, and then he would have to get up and crouch down on the floor with his back to his sister while stood there with her wand. But then his fingers closed around it, and he pulled it out. _"Lumos,"_ he whispered, as Azula held the book impatiently.

One of the pages had a suspiciously rust colored blotch in the corner, and now that his face was close to it, he could smell the book's faint odor of rot. It turned his stomach. "Where did you get this?"

"It was in the restricted section, Zuko, honestly." He could practically feel her rolling her eyes. "Just read it."

"Yeah, I figured that out," he said tartly. "How did you get it to stop screaming?"

"Is that what you care about?" There was a strange note in her voice, almost like betrayal. "I nicked a permission slip from a seventh year."

"Oh, okay." At least she hadn't broken the wards on them, or done something else spectacular and amazing that probably none of the professors could have pulled off. She'd just lifted a permission slip. He felt vaguely relieved by that.

"Oh for-" she shook the book. "Just read it."

"It's not going to cast some kind of horrible spell if I do?"

Azula hit him in the side of the head, hard. "If I wanted to hex you, I would do it myself," she hissed. "I wouldn't give a _book_ the satisfaction.

Zuko took the book from her hands and started to read:

 _Newborns of course have the greatest potential for life, and some of the most powerful rituals of sacrifice take advantage of this fact. The use of newborns as the object of sacrifice is best suited for rituals of rebirth or healing, as the newborn's potential life is traded for a beneficiary. The sacrifice of a newborn is a profoundly unnatural act, and as with much of dark magic, this violation of the natural order imbues it with special power. Because of the magical nature of the parental bond, and because birth itself is a highly magically charged event, sacrifices of newborns are most powerful when performed by the mother._

 _As newborn sacrifice rituals must be performed mere moments after birth to be fully effective, and most such works involve a great deal of ritual preparation, sacrifice magic of this type often involves rituals performed leading up to the birth, during the pregnancy. One such sacrifice, the_ Apokatastatheí Pateras _ritual, involves a ritualized conception as well. This ritual, designed to resurrect those whose bodies are destroyed or uninhabitable, but who are tied to the mortal plane by magical means, is designed to ensure the birth of twins. This ritualized conception takes place years, or even decades before true pregnancy begins, and as such functions as insurance for the father of the twins. One twin is always male, to house the soul of his father, while the other twin may be of either sex and is the sacrificial victim of the spell. Both twins die as a part of this ritual, though only one is a true newborn sacrifice, while the other is merely forced out of his body by his father's soul._

 _This ritual has only been performed successfully on two recorded occasions, and there are no other recorded attempts. There are a number of less grisly, and perhaps more importantly, as less time consuming ways to resurrect persons tethered to life by means of a horcrux whose bodies have been rendered unusable. The final stages of the_ Apokatastatheí Pateras _ritual are only performed therefore as an act of desperation when the resources to use other means of resurrection are unavailable._

"I bet you anything our mother read this book," Azula said lightly, when he looked up. "Maybe she even read this exact copy. I wonder if they keep logs."

Zuko shrugged. "She probably did," he replied neutrally.

Azula snatched the book out of his hands and shut it with a soft bang that sent particles of dust and the book's rotten smell into the air. Her lips stretched into a painful smile and her voice took on a worrying sing-song quality. "So Zuko, how does it feel to know you were born to die?"

"Why don't you tell me?" he snapped, rapidly losing patience. All that waiting, and waiting, and _waiting_ for Azula to say something, anything about their father being... who he was, and all that happened was she made him read a really unpleasant book? "You've had longer to think about it than me anyway."

Azula shot him a look full of frustration. "Well then how does it feel to know that you were born to be You-Know-Who's new body?"

Relieved, he didn't want to say, because if his parents had made him to kill him, he was supposed to be a victim too, and he didn't have to feel responsible for what they had done. He wasn't their child, just their ingredient.

"I kind of already figured it was something like this," he told her. She had to have too, right? If she was looking in those kinds of books for the answer. Suddenly, he wondered how long she had been looking. Had she started as soon as they had found out? A flash of what might have been sympathy, or might have been fear for what else she had found in the restricted section while she was looking, stole over him. "I mean, it's _Bellatrix Lestrange_ and _Voldemort."_ He stopped. It was the first time he had said the name out loud instead of just in his head, and he had the absurd urge to look over his shoulder. "She had us in _Azkaban._ It wasn't like they made us because they wanted to play happy families."

For a moment, Azula's face in the harsh light of his wand looked troubled, almost like she wanted to cry. He wished suddenly that he had the kind of relationship with her that he could hug her, and tell her it was okay. The records said he was born first. That made him her big brother, kind of. It was probably supposed to be his job to do things like that. It occurred to him that he had never... It was so obvious to him that there was no way Bellatrix and Voldemort could have wanted them just because they wanted children. Things didn't work that way. And Azula was so much smarter than he was, so much better at figuring things out, that it just never occurred to him to wonder if she had ever thought about what they were made for, and maybe wish that maybe he could have been part of a family with people like that. He didn't quite know what to do with that thought.

And then another horrible thought hit him, that maybe Azula had known about the sacrifice thing all along, but figured only one of them was supposed to be sacrificed. His sympathy turned into a knot in his stomach. He fumbled for something to say, to make a girl who probably had been entertaining fantasies for a year of him dying as a baby, feel better. "At least now you know they made both of us on purpose. It's not like you were an extra or something."

Zuko only had a heartbeat to see Azula's eyes narrow down into cold, furious slits before her wand came up to rest against his cheekbone, aiming right into his eye. "Azula, wait," he tried, but it was no use.

Afterward, he could never remember what curse she used. He supposed he must have blacked it out. Her words ran together in an ugly brutal stream as fire erupted from her wand. He closed his eyes as the breath left his body. By the time he had enough air to scream, Azula was gone.


	9. Danse Macabre

**October 2nd-3rd, 2009: Fifth Year**

Mai received the letter at breakfast on October the second, less than a week before her birthday. The owl landed gracefully between the platters of eggs and waffles, depositing the letter next to her plate and waiting with solemn expectation, like the well-bred creature he was. She raised one eyebrow and stared at him coldly, but he didn't leave. Giving up, she opened it with carefully concealed dread. The salutation read _"Darling,"_ which never heralded anything good.

A strange, almost amused kind of horror mounted within her at litany of phrases like "terrible tragedy," and "your cousin Theodore", and of course the very important one, "no children." Her father's glee was practically palpable, radiating up from the paper. Yes, of course, her cousin Theodore dead, with no children. So tragic.

Down at the bottom was a small postscript, informing her that her presence at the funeral would be most beneficial to helping her "process her grief." She didn't think it was grief she was feeling, not for a man she had never met for longer than it took to bob a curtsey and attempt a smile, but it was always so hard for her to tell what she was feeling, when all her face ever did was turn to stone. Yes, she supposed, the funeral would help her process her grief, and at the end of the process, she would look like such a dutiful Nott.

"What do you have there?" Ty Lee asked, and Mai would have happily hexed her into oblivion when Azula turned her attention on them.

"Family news," she said, letting her words be truthful, if not honest. "One of my cousins is dead. My parents want me to attend the funeral."

"Are you going to go?" Ty Lee's hands made an automatic reach for the letter, but she stopped them.

Mai shrugged. She folded the letter and put it in her pocket. "I do love spending my Saturdays in graveyards."

"Thrilling," Azula cut in, her voice letting them know she thought it was anything but.

Strangely enough, it _was_ thrilling. She was a Pureblood heiress now, which for all of her machinations and pretenses, was something Azula would never be. And Mai couldn't care less about it, except for how furious it was going to make Azula when she found out. She just wished she knew whether it was spite or terror gnawing at her insides.

o0O0o

"He's a fine Nott, your father." The woman in the pew next to her nodded approvingly at him as he gave a perfectly appropriate eulogy for a man he barely ever spoke to in life.

"Hmm," Mai responded, utterly bored.

"And you my dear, show every sign of growing into a fine Nott yourself." the woman continued as Mai tried to place her. "It's a shame your father couldn't have found himself a proper English witch to marry, you know, but better than marrying some jumped up halfblood. Please don't take this the wrong way, my dear. You are every inch a proper English witch yourself, don't you worry."

No, Mai didn't think she was taking any of this the wrong way at all.

Mai turned her expression of intense disinterest on the prayer book in her lap as the woman continued. "Though I suppose you're father's little jaunt abroad was for the best. After all, kept him out of that mess with He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Kept his nose clean, didn't he? Not like some people I could mention." She glanced significantly at the Malfoy family, three pews behind them and on the other side of the aisle.

Mai sighed heavily.

"Oh, I do not envy you my dear," the woman told her, patting her hand sympathetically. "Trying to find a husband in times like these. We had so much trouble with my Leonette..." She trailed off with a sigh.

Oh so that's who the woman was. Mai remembered Leonette. She had been a Slytherin Beater until she graduated two years ago. Privately, Mai thought Mrs. Wilkes's difficulties getting her daughter married off probably had more to do with Leonette Wilkes than with the calamitous state of British Pureblood society. She didn't mention it though. More and more, she found herself wondering if she was really human, or if somewhere along the way, she had transfigured herself into a mirror that was only capable of showing other people what they wanted to see. "Oh yes," Mai replied without feeling. "Frightful state of affairs."

o0O0o

The Potions lab was deserted on that late Saturday afternoon, which was the way Mai preferred it. There was nothing quite like being alone with a simmering cauldron to soothe her frayed nerves, and there, in the privacy of the empty dungeon, she could admit they were indeed most frayed.

And if she wasn't really supposed to be there brewing without a teacher's supervision, well, it was amazing what Mai could get away with by looking at whoever caught her as if they were too stupid for words for thinking she wasn't allowed.

Waving her wand over her cauldron, she watched as the white light flared and crackled through the liquid inside and then dimmed. After the wand light had died away, and the potion changed to a dark, dusky purple, Mai snuffed the flame under the cauldron and left it to cool as she gathered bottles, a ladle, and a funnel. A faint cool smell wafted up from the potion, and Mai breathed it in.

"What's this?"

Mai looked up. The knot between Mai's shoulder blades, which had begun to loosen as she brewed, tightened back up. "Hello, Professor."

Professor Slughorn favored her with a genial look. "I don't remember giving you permission to use the lab today, my girl."

Mai shrugged elegantly in reply.

"Oh well, I suppose I can give a little leniency to one of my best students, especially since..." He examined her potion, and she wondered if he had been about to mention her dearly departed cousin. "Migraine ease. A little extra O.W.L. practice?"

She shook her head. "It's for a friend." A quick thermometer spell told her the potion was ready to be bottled, so she put the funnel into the first bottle and ladled the purple liquid into it. Hands steady, she repeated the process until she had a line of bottles full and the cauldron was empty.

"Oh yes." The smile he bestowed upon her exuded an altogether too familiar and complacent pride, as if he felt he understood her and that they had so much in common. "You really have chosen exemplary friends, my girl, truly exemplary." When she didn't respond, he rested a hand on her shoulder, and she had to force herself not to stiffen under it. "That young Azula Lestrange especially. Shame about her heritage of course, but the efforts she has made to rise above it are truly remarkable, pity her brother isn't-"

"What's wrong with Zuko?" she snapped. She had been asking this question for _years,_ and no one could give her a satisfactory answer. No one even really tried.

"He..." Slughorn hesitated. "Well he-"

"I want you to be very careful," Mai cut him off, almost trembling with the acute awareness of just how... inappropriate she was being to talk to a professor this way, how arrogant and high handed. "Before you insult my future husband."

Her Head of House stared at her, stricken. His mouth opened, and an uncharitable person might have said he gaped, but he closed it again without saying anything.

Mai shivered, but as the shiver ran through her body, it changed and gathered energy, until it had metamorphosed into a rumbling in her ears like a breaking storm. "You like Azula because she makes you feel important," she told him coldly. "So you let yourself overlook everything she does that scares you, or sickens you, or hurts you, but you know what? She makes you feel important on purpose, because she can use you. Nobody is important to Azula except Azula."

"Mai!" he gasped.

But Mai was too far gone to care. "She doesn't care about anyone."

Slughorn looked away from her, and down at the bottles of potions she had made. "You added too much water mint, and not enough eel's blood. It won't be as effective."

"The person I'm making it for is smell sensitive. If she can't even swallow it, it won't have any effect at all." She closed her eyes and _willed_ herself to stop shaking. She wanted to yell at him, to demand to know why he wasn't taking points or throwing her in detention, or something for the way she had spoken to him. The air hummed with the force of Slughorn Not Doing Anything, of him Not Listening and Pretending It Hadn't Happened. A spark of pure, clean, disturbing, ugly, hatred flared up within her and then fizzled away.

"I'm sure you know best, Miss Nott," he told her, as if he were sure of nothing of the kind, and Mai heard the words for what they were, the withdrawing of his regard, the revocation of his favor.

He had chosen Azula over her.

And it really hadn't been that bad.

She corked the bottles and packed them into her bag before holding her head high and sweeping out of the classroom with every ounce of dignity her parents had ever fought to imbue her with.

It took most of the long walk out of the dungeons, the quiet broken only by the click click click of her own shoes against the stone for her to realize what she had said. As she emerged into the sunlight streaming down through high castle windows, she staggered into an alcove and doubled over, her head falling into her hands. Oh, she realized. She should probably say something to Zuko about that "future husband" thing.

o0O0o

It was an ambush more than an embrace, really, but Zuko, to his credit, took it in stride. "How was the funeral?"

"There was a dead person in a coffin." Mai pulled her arms back and wrapped her hand around his. "I need to talk to you."

He let her pull him into an unused classroom, and gazed at her expectantly as she shut the door behind them and locked it with a flick of her wand.

Now that she was there, now that she was facing him, all of the words she had planned rushed up into her throat at once and choked each other off trying to tumble out of her mouth first. "I don't know what to say," she admitted.

"Are you okay?" he asked, and when she started nodding quickly, too quickly, more like a tremble than a nod, he pulled her to him and wrapped his arms around her until her breath evened out and the shaking she hadn't even known she was doing began to subside.

"I'm okay," she whispered and stepped back, anything but. "I'm okay."

Zuko nodded and sank into one of the desks.

Mai smoothed her face when she was nervous the way some people smoothed their clothes. She knew once she started, the words would just come, and it would just flow, and Zuko would listen, and it would all be over with one way or the other, but she couldn't quite... "I told Slughorn we were getting married."

"What?" Zuko shook his head like he couldn't believe what he had heard.

"I told Slughorn we were getting married," she said, her voice stronger the second time. Then she waited for the words to pour out. When they didn't come, she swallowed. Oh, she thought. I am going to have to do this the hard way.

"I um, Mai, uh," Zuko gave up. "Mai?"

"I want to marry you." And Mai realized something. It was the reason why almost as soon as Zuko let go of her she had started to shake again. She had no idea what he was going to say, and she... She had no idea what he was going to say.

"You don't have to," Zuko mumbled. "Just because you said that to Slughorn doesn't mean you have to marry me."

"I want to marry you," she said again, feeling like all of the air had been ripped from her lungs. He had his face turned away from her, so that the only eye she could see was the scarred one, the one set constantly into a narrow glower, the one that told her nothing about what he was thinking and feeling, nothing at all. "I love you."

He turned his face to her so she could see his other eye. All at once she didn't want to. It was wide and round as dinner plates, with white showing all around the edges. "We're _fifteen!"_

All of a sudden, her legs just went weak, too weak to keep her upright. She collapsed into the desk next to him so fast it bounced and banged back down to the floor. Maybe the impact jarred something loose, or maybe she was so wrung out and exhausted she couldn't stop it, but the next thing she knew, tears were rolling down her face, mixing with her mascara into black streaks down her face.

Zuko toppled out of his chair and halfway into Mai's lap, sending them both tumbling to the dusty floor with the force of his need to get to her and comfort her. A tiny stubbornly hopeful part of her thrilled at that, but it probably didn't mean anything, certainly not that he _loved_ her or anything like that. He just hated it when people were upset. He pushed himself out of her lap and reached out to hug her, but she held herself stiff, and he let his arms fall. "Um Mai?" he whispered unsteadily. "I, uh, it's not that I don't want to marry you, I just wasn't really expecting it to um, come up yet, you know I was kind of expecting a couple of years..." He trailed off. "I _love_ you."

Mai tried to force her voice to become calm and her eyes to dry, but when she spoke, it just came out as a faint croak. "You don't have to."

"I really don't know how to make myself stop, so I guess I kind of do," he stammered. "Have to, I mean." This time when he grabbed her and pulled her close, she let him. Without meaning to, her arms snaked out to wrap around him too, and all she wanted to do was bury her face in his hair. There was a special place, where his hair met his neck, that always smelled like his skin and his hair, and all of his smells combined, and if she could have, she would have wrapped herself up in that smell like a blanket for the rest of her life, safe. "I love you," he whispered.

o0O0o

By the time Mai woke up, the classroom was bathed in moonlight. Zuko's head was resting on his shoulder, his steady slumbering breaths almost soundless next to her ear. She picked up his hand, which had been lying on the floor between them, and rubbed the knuckles gently, then, feeling foolish, she dropped it.

Zuko's eyes fluttered open, the darkness and the blue haze of night leaching the gold out of them. "Mai!"

Mai closed her eyes. The memories from that afternoon rushed back to her, and her face flushed with mortification. "You don't have to marry me," she told him coldly. "I'm not going to start crying if you say no."

Even in the moonlight, she could see him go pale, and then turn bright red. "I didn't say yes because you were crying."

"Then why did you?" Even in her own ears, her voice sounded harsh, accusatory. Defensive.

Zuko didn't answer, at least not with words. He put his arm around her shoulder and kissed the top of her head.

"My cousin who died was Theodore Nott," she said, looking straight ahead. When Zuko didn't say anything, she explained, "The head of the family. He didn't have any children, so my father inherited. I'm now heiress to the House of Nott."

"Oh," he whispered.

"My parents are probably moving into the manor already." She tried to sound matter-of-fact, like she didn't care that she was probably never going to see her bedroom again. That shouldn't be what was bothering her. It shouldn't be. "So if you marry me, you are marrying that."

"Okay." He didn't sound okay.

"You're going to have to take my name. You're going to have to act like..." She shivered. She tried to picture him, walking just so, talking just so, poised and perfect in all the ways that had been drummed into her since before she could speak. It didn't seem like the same person. For one horrible moment, she thought she was about to start crying again. "Like us. Like a Pureblood aristocrat."

"I'm a halfblood," he pointed out. "I don't think it's going to matter how I act. I'm still a halfblood."

And the son of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named and his top Death Eater. She didn't know which one her parents would think was worse. "It still matters," she choked out. "Believe me."

He nodded. His hand found her hand, and his fingers intertwined themselves with hers. She held tight. "So what do I have to do?"

"I guess I have to teach you," she murmured. "I don't know where to start." She stood up, the sharp sound of her dress shoes ringing against the stone floor seeming somehow remote, separate from the room around them. She strode over to the empty area of floor between the desks and the podium, an idea striking her. "You need to know how to dance."

"Mai, are you asking me to dance?" At her nod, he grabbed onto one of the desks and hauled himself to his feet. He dashed over to her, and held out a hand.

"I guess I am." Before she took his hand in hers and wrapped her other arm around his waist, she popped her wand out of her wrist holster and cast a music spell. A waltz started playing, tinny and sharp, like something from a music box. "I already asked you to marry me."

"I, uh, hope you know I don't have any idea how to dance." His hand in hers was clammy and stiff.

"The first rule is don't step on my feet," she told him.

He looked down at their feet. "Yeah, I kind of figured that out already."

"Then you are a very clever little boy," she said without inflection. "The second rule is this is a waltz, so it goes one, two, three, one, two, three, and you kind of dance around in a little circle."

She pulled him through the steps, and he let her, and she couldn't figure out how on earth she was still talking, because the world had narrowed down to his hands, in hers and on her shoulder, and her arm around his waist.

"I'll lead when we dance together, because I am the Nott heiress, and you are my spouse, but most of the other people you dance with, you'll be expected to lead. Before we're married though, if you have to dance, you will follow, because you are a halfblood, and you're illegitimate, and the Lestranges don't claim you."

Mai noted absently that she must have it really bad, because even his dear in the headlights look was kind of cute. "How will I know? I mean do I go up and ask?"

"No!" Mai just knew he _would_ try such a thing, really. "There are charts. I think I might still have a copy."

He shot her a look of pure terror, as if he had only just realized what he was really getting into.

"We can't get married right now anyway," she told him, hoping she sounded reassuring. "We're not seventeen yet."

"Oh God," he said shakily. "We're engaged." And then, "I need to get you a ring."

There was no way he could afford to get her a ring. She rolled her eyes. "I'll get the ring. I will pick out a suitable family heirloom from an ancestor of mine who hasn't done something despicable." Zuko tried to speak, but she plowed on. "Unless you want to go up to Harry Potter himself and say, 'Hi, I'm You-Know-Who's Azkaban baby with Bellatrix Lestrange. You might have heard of them. May I look through the Black family heirlooms, which are probably full of all kinds of dark magic relics to see if I can find an engagement ring for my fiancée, who oh, by the way is the cousin of a couple of Death Eaters herself?'" When Zuko stared back, shocked into openmouthed silence, Mai said, "If you are planning on doing that, I'd like to watch."

His unscarred eye bugged out as he made a funny kind of choking noise. Then, the choking turned into a cough, and then into a hysterical giggle. He broke away from her, almost falling over, and some of the dust that had rubbed off from the floor to his robe billowed up into the air at the sudden movement. He sneezed and sneezed as he laughed, and Mai couldn't help herself, she started laughing too. They stood there in the abandoned classroom, covered in dust, and suddenly, she was painfully aware of the fact that she was still dressed for a funeral, in her black dust covered dress robes, and her hair had come partway undone, and she had streaks of mascara running down her face. Zuko had on his too short, threadbare school robes, and battered Muggle trainers, and his hair was sticking up from their nap. And they were planning a wedding.

Slowly, slowly, Zuko swallowed down the giggles and put his hand on her shoulder, taking her other hand. She put her arm around his waist and pressed her face into his shoulder and tried to hold it together.

"When we're done, we could go down to the kitchens, share one of those fruit tarts you like, make a night of it. I mean, it's already _hours_ after curfew, might as well." He bit his bottom lip and gave her the kind of smile that looked like it was trying very hard to be a grin, but didn't quite know how. "You can teach me stuffy Purebred manners."

"And then sneak back to the dorms at three in the morning?" she asked, her voice muffled.

"Yeah."

She picked her head up off his shoulder and kissed him on the cheek. "I'd like that."

"And we can get married the summer between sixth and seventh year, after my birthday," he breathed. "Something to look forward to."

Mai didn't answer him with words. She just wrapped her arms around him and held on tight.


	10. Declaration of Intent

**October 31, 2009: Fifth Year**

Mai knew of course that requesting weekend leave twice in a month would garner attention. In fact she rather hoped it would, especially since she had given up a coveted Hogsmeade weekend to spend quality time with her parents. After flooing into the Headmistress' office, she went directly to the Slytherin dormitory and dropped her bag into her trunk before ascending the steps back into the common room. Without so much as a glance at any of the first and second years clustered around the fireplace, she enthroned herself on one of the high backed chairs facing the windows that looked out into the lake. Let Ty Lee and Azula enjoy their day in Hogsmeade. They would still have to come to her.

The problem with setting a scene was just how unspeakably boring it got sitting there waiting for the two of them, knowing that the second she got up, was the second that they would pick to walk through the door. She put her hand on the arm of the chair, tilting it so that her ring caught the firelight just so.

She had been sorely tempted by an extremely tacky REGARD ring, especially after she heard that it belonged to a several times great aunt, who had been disowned for marrying a Muggle, and had left the ring to the family in her will, along with a nasty hex to ensure they kept it. So too had she been tempted by a lovely sapphire ring set in a starburst of diamonds, until she discovered that one had been worn by an ancestor of hers who had campaigned in favor of Muggle hunting.

But this ring... Her mother had gone faintly green when Mai had touched it. One of her whatever great grandfathers had been a famous jeweler, and he had made the ring himself to give to his lady love, who, according to her father, had done nothing more noteworthy with her life than breed krups. Which as far as Mai was concerned, made it perfect. Her father told her she would be the third Nott woman to wear it, and her mother told her it wasn't a bauble for a child, and to put it back. So of course Mai had put it on instead. The centerpiece was a large, round, facetted ruby, perfectly clear and deep red, set in gold, with glittering diamond flowers decorating the band. Until she had put it on they had been roses, but they had turned to cherry blossoms the moment it had become hers. It was a ring that made a statement, and that statement that hers was an old, old power, of blood and history, that Azula couldn't even dream of having. But Zuko could. It made the statement that Mai was a queen who had chosen a king.

Of course she was also a school girl, who had just spent the day being told just how much of a stupid little girl she was, but she wasn't about to let _that_ show.

What little daylight filtered down through the lake water had nearly spilled away by the time the portal to the common room opened, and Mai's body quivered with anticipation, until the voices of the seventh year boys reached her. But they left the common room almost as soon as they had entered it, heading for the stairway to their dorms.

It occurred to Mai then that Azula probably had a confrontation of her own planned with Mai, or more likely, an interrogation, and would probably wait for the common room to empty before she made her entrance with Ty Lee. For once, it was a hopeful thought. Might as well use Azula's theatrics (and ooh wouldn't Azula hate to hear it called that) for once, let her face Mai and only Mai, alone in all her Pureblood splendor.

"Miss Nott?"

The words shook Mai out of her reverie, and her head jerked up. A second year boy she didn't recognize waved at her awkwardly from where he stood near her elbow. "Yes?"

"Congratulations," he said turning pink. "On your engagement, I mean."

She inclined her head graciously and he darted away for the dorms. Well, Azula better come soon, she figured, or the news would be all over the school, and her entire display would be wasted. And wouldn't that be a shame.

Waiting through the returns of the rest of her housemates, Mai closed her eyes and kept very still, her breathing almost as deep and even as if she had been asleep. She didn't really think she could deal with any more congratulations just now.

o0O0o

Once nearly all of the stragglers had drifted back into the common room, and then down to their dorms, Mai opened her eyes and began to count. She wondered how long Azula would be able to stand making her wait.

Not long, as it happened. The wall opened two minutes and twelve seconds after the common room had emptied. She wondered what Azula would have done if the common room had been full of people when she came in, if she would have walked out again. But the common room _was_ empty, except for Mai.

Then Azula and Ty Lee started heading for their dorm, and Mai nearly strangled them both. Instead, she opened her mouth and said "Hello Azula, Ty Lee."

They stopped gratifyingly in their tracks. Azula approached first, and Mai wondered if she was made to feel at all like a supplicant, or if Mai was simply deluding herself. "Hello Mai, did you enjoy spending time with your family?"

"Yes," she drawled. "I did."

She could almost feel the moment Azula noticed the ring, her eyes zeroing in on it like an eagle with a rabbit. "Late birthday present?"

She spread her fingers, as if to examine it, then curled them again. "It's a family heirloom."

"How is the manor?" Azula asked.

And there it was, the first time Azula had mentioned her changed status. Mai had begun to worry that Azula didn't know. "Oh, you know what those old Pureblood manors are like."

"Mai," Ty Lee cut in hesitantly. "Do you have something to tell us?"

There was something really really wonderful about Ty Lee, who had no claim on the Wizarding World or its history except her own magic, being the first to figure it out. She felt a fierce rush of affection for her friend. "My family will be announcing my engagement in the morning."

"Oh Mai!" Ty Lee seemed to apparate, she ran so quickly to her side, snatching up her left hand. "I'm so sorry! You must be..." She gazed imploringly into her face. "Tell me at least that it's someone we know, that it isn't a stranger... Oh, Zuko's going to be heartbroken!"

Mai suddenly wondered just what Ty Lee had been reading to give herself these ideas. "I'm marrying Zuko."

"When did he ask you?" Azula remained behind her, and Mai reined in a shudder. "Before or after you became the Nott Heir?"

Mai didn't answer, certainly not to reply that she had been the one to do the asking.

"He asked you right after the funeral, didn't he?" Azula said gleefully, and Mai gave a little start. "Oh Zuko, how surprisingly ghoulish! I didn't think he had it in him. I thought you were smarter than that, though Mai. It really is transparent what he's really after, isn't it?"

Rare as it was, the moments Azula's barbs missed their mark, when Azula honed in on an insecurity she didn't have, were something to cherish, since it meant Azula was too busy picking at that to go for real blood. And Mai wasn't going to stop her. Not that Azula really thought her brother was after Mai's money anyway. "You clearly don't have any idea why I'm marrying him if you think his motives matter to me."

"Oh Mai," That was all the warning Azula gave her before she flicked the tip of her wand and sent Mai's chair spinning around to face her. "You're marrying him because you think you love him, and you're a hopeless romantic and always have been." When Mai managed not to react, Azula tapped her chin thoughtfully. "Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe you're just desperate."

As she spoke, Azula braced her hands on the arms of Mai's chair and loomed in. All of a sudden, she wasn't a queen on a throne, but a butterfly pinned in a display case. She may have miscalculated, she realized afraid. After all, the ring, and the statement it was intended to convey, also firmly marked her as belonging to the same sort of people who had once called Azula's father their lord.

"You can go ahead and marry Zuko and ruin your life if you want. I can't stop you." She bent down and kissed Mai's cheek. "I hope you like being my sister."

After Azula left, taking Ty Lee with her, it was a long, long time before Mai could make her legs carry her to her bed in their dorm.


	11. Purim Spiel

**November 27th, 2005: First Year**

"Taking a leaf out of your sister's book and torturing small innocent creatures now?"

Zuko pulled the reed out of his mouth. "What?"

"That noise!" Toph jabbed her finger into his face. "Sounds like you're killing something cute and furry."

He scowled at her, which she remained blithely oblivious to. "It's a clarinet."

"What did the clari-whatsit ever do to you?"

He sniffed irritably at her, brought it back up to his mouth and started to play again.

"That's it!" As soon as the first notes sounded, a book slammed down on one of the tables near the fireplace, and the seventh year boy who had done it was marching over, his face like a thunderstorm. "If I hear one more sound out of you, Lestrange, I'll put you in a full body bind and dump you outside the Slytherin common room."

Before Zuko could stop himself, he snarled, "Oh yeah? You and what army?"

"Do you actually like getting your butt kicked?" Toph asked, sounding impressed by the sheer depth of his stupidity.

That seemed to bring the seventh year out of whatever state of shock Zuko's words had induced. He jabbed his wand in Zuko's face, and he must have cast nonverbally, because Zuko toppled down onto the sofa, his body seizing up. The clarinet hit the wooden knob on the end of the sofa arm, letting out an ominous crack. "Just for that I'm going to hang a sign around your neck that says 'free to a good home.'"

 _"Point me,"_ came the muttered incantation, just before a small form barreled into the back of the seventh year's legs, sending him stumbling. He caught himself against the wall with one arm, raising his wand with the other and pointing it at Toph.

"All right, that's enough." A seventh year girl with a prefect badge pinned to her robe shoved her arm between Toph and the other seventh year. _"Reparo."_ With a wave of her wand, Zuko's clarinet mended itself, and with another wave, she released Zuko, who slumped bonelessly against the sofa. She pointed her wand back at Zuko and Toph. "You two, clear out."

They didn't wait to hear what she was going to say to the other seventh year. Zuko grabbed his clarinet, its case, his sheet music, and his notebook quill and ink, and bundled them up under one arm before tearing out of there with Toph on his heels.

"Come on, let's go to the cave behind the mirror," Toph said, once she had caught her breath. "Don't know why you didn't just go there in the first place."

"The clarinet's too loud."

"Yeah no kidding." She elbowed him gently. "Which is why you shouldn't have been playing it _in the common room."_

He sighed, pride still smarting. "No I mean I was worried about somebody hearing, following it to the cave."

"I'll teach you the silencing charm that goes with my read aloud charm." She rolled her eyes. "You could have just asked, you know."

"Sorry," he said, wondering if that's what normal people who understood this kind of thing did, ask their friends for help.

"So what were you playing, anyway?" she asked, because apparently that _was_ something normal people did, ask what their friends were playing when they thought it sounded like dying animals.

"It's for Purim." He tried to shrug, but he had too much stuff under his arm to move it without losing his grip. "The Jewish holiday?"

"Never heard of it."

"Of course you haven't," he muttered.

"Hey, you haven't heard of most of the holidays my family celebrates either," she pointed out, trying to sound nonchalant.

He hmmed, since he didn't really want to get into what the orphanage was like all decorated for everyone's holidays, and Song cooking lucky New Year dumplings for everyone. "It's the feast of Ester, and she and her uncle saved the Jews of Persia when the Persian king's vizier wanted to kill all of them, so for Purim, we put on a play about it, and I can't be in it this year, because I'm at Hogwarts, but I've been helping out with the songs for a couple of years now, and they're letting me do them this year. Only they have to be really good, because..." He stopped. He didn't want to sound weird.

"Because it's your first time?" Toph didn't sound like she thought he was weird.

"Yeah." And because they were letting him write them as a favor. He didn't want them to be disappointed. "I want to get them done by the winter holiday, so I can take them in myself, and so they have lots of time to practice. And anyway, I just write the lyrics. We always use a band or a musical or something, and use those songs for the music. This time we're using Mulan, you know, like the Disney movie?"

"The what?"

"You know, Mulan, its-"

"I know who Mulan is!" she cut him off. "What the heck is a 'Disney movie?'"

"Oh," Zuko grinned. "Oh wow, you don't know what you've been missing."


	12. Silver Lime and Unicorn Hair

**July 17th, 1965**

Margret Anne glanced up at her mother. Her mouth was drawn down in an anxious, disapproving frown, which to Margret Anne meant everything was fine. It was better than fine, it was wonderful. "What on earth would the vicar say?" her mother muttered.

"You'd best not be telling him," the very short man who was escorting them answered cheerfully. He had introduced himself as a professor when he had brought The Letter, and even looking around at everything, Margret Anne still could barely believe it, that this little man taught at a school for magic. A school she was going to attend. "There are laws against it you know!"

"There are magical laws?" her mother asked faintly. "You people make laws?"

"Well you couldn't very well expect Muggles to deal with Wizarding criminals, now could you?" he tittered. "Now my dear, there's just one thing left. The most important tool a witch can possess, aside from her mind. And her magic itself, of course. Your wand."

As he spoke, he held open the door to a dimly lit shop, the interior of which was strewn with long, narrow boxes. They rested on every surface, dangling precariously off the edges of shelves and tables, stacked haphazardly on the floor or on the one chair. As they closed the door, one of the boxes slid off its perch on the arm of the chair and onto its fellows on the seat. "Oh dear," Margret Anne mumbled.

A tall, graying man loped his way over to greet them. "Filius Flitwick, elm and unicorn horn, nine and a quarter inches, quite bendable. Congratulations on your recent appointment, _Professor_ Flitwick," he said, voice creaking softly. "You begin teaching this next term?"

Professor Flitwick's cheeks went faintly pink. "Yes well, I brought a student, Miss Baker."

Margret Anne stepped forward, hands clasped behind her back, and the man turned his pale, distant eyes onto her. "Hold your arms out for me Miss Baker. Which is your wand arm?"

"Er," Margret Anne said.

"Which hand do you prefer to write with?" prompted Professor Flitwick.

"Right," she told him, voice hoarse with sudden nerves.

At that, the man snapped his fingers and a ribbon of measuring tape jumped out of his pocket. All the big bangs and flashes and things looked like stage magic, but this was something Mrs. Baker did all of the time, and here it was being done, nonchalantly, with magic. Made it feel real, Margret Anne supposed.

The measuring tape moved to her her legs, then worked its way through every measurement she thought was even possible as the man wrote down the numbers. At last he said, "You can drop your arms now, Miss Baker."

Margret Anne did, gratefully, as he picked up a stack of boxes off the chair and carried them with him to a rickety rolling ladder. "I do apologize for the mess, Miss Baker. My last customer was a tricky one. Well, not so much him as his father..." He sighed as he rolled the ladder back and forth, putting the boxes away before carefully selecting several more and climbing back down. "I shouldn't speak ill of my customers, but some of them forget that it is the wand that chooses the wizard and not the other way round."

He opened one of the boxes and lifted out a dark wood wand with a gleaming finish. "Walnut and phoenix feather, eleven inches, stiff." He handed it to her gently. "Give it a try."

She took it, looking at him uncertainly, before giving it a halfhearted wave. There was a zooming sound, and one of the spokes on the back of the chair snapped.

"Margret Anne!" her mother yelped. "Be careful!"

"No, this is to be expected," the wandmaker said calmly. "The good professor set fire to my carpet when he was finding his first wand." Professor Flitwick went pink again. "But I don't think this wand is for you."

He put it back in his box and handed her another. "Spruce and dragon heartstring, twelve and a quarter inches, thin and pliable."

She gave it a more cautious flick, and a small fizzling spark floated out. He snatched it out of her hands, passing her another, this time ten inches, vine, with a unicorn hair. It did absolutely nothing at all when she waved it.

"Hmm," the man said, and Margret Anne looked down.

Professor Flitwick reached up to put a comforting hand on her shoulder. "Don't worry, Miss Baker, Ollivander has never failed to match a witch or wizard who came into his store with a wand."

Ollivander looked down from where he was fetching more wand boxes, to see Margret Anne walking over to the windowsill, where a box waited, hanging off the edge. She picked it up. It felt warm from the sun, pulling off the lid, she grasped the wand inside, warmth flooding her fingers like she had dipped them in bathwater. "Oh," she whispered.

Ollivander hastily put the boxes away and leapt down. "Ah," he said, drawing the sound out. "Give it a wave."

A cloud of sweet perfume poured out, silver sparks dancing in the air around her like confetti. "Wow." She couldn't stop staring at it, the lustrous gray wood, the elegant round handle, it was... _Wow._

"Silver Lime and Unicorn hair, eleven inches, flexible," Ollivander proclaimed. "An interesting wand has picked _you,_ Margret Anne Baker."

"Interesting how?" her mother demanded.

Ollivander blinked at her. "Silver lime was very fashionable in my grandfather's day. Lovely wand wood, but it is not for every witch or wizard who finds it pretty. It prefers witches and wizards talented in some of the rarer and more mysterious magical arts. Your daughter must be most strong minded, and clear sighted for this wand to take to her so." He turned to Margret Anne. "It may have fallen out of fashion, but craft is craft, and you would do well to remember that, whatever path you choose."

As her mother stepped over to pay for the wand with that weird Wizarding money, Margret Anne reluctantly put the wand back in its box and wrapped it back up for safekeeping. She clutched it to her chest rather than let Ollivander bag it for her. She could almost hear it calling her name, but she couldn't hear it well enough to tell what name it was calling, just that it wasn't Margret Anne, even if it was definitely calling to _her._

Flitwick opened the door for them, and sunlight and noise from the street poured in, dispelling the wand shop's shadowy quiet. "When you reach third year, my dear, I would recommend taking Divination," he told her. "Not a subject I ever had much talent for, I'm sad to say, but one I suspect you will excel in."

And that, suddenly, even more than holding that wand, even more than listening it whisper her name to her, cracked through the unreality of it all. There she was, standing there in her prim little blouse and skirt, braids and ribbons in her hair, looking just as proper and respectable middle class English as her mother could make her, in the doorway of a _wand shop,_ holding her _own_ wand, listening to a professor of magic recommend which classes she should take at magic school, as if it were completely normal.

o0O0o

Her mother had already gone to bed when Margret Anne ambushed her father in the sitting room. She was wearing pajamas, and her hair was wet from the bath, but she had her new wand in her hand, and that was the important thing. She jabbed it into the back of his neck. "Hi Dad."

"What are you doing, Margret Anne?" he asked sharply. There was a note of fear there. _Good,_ she thought.

"I have a wand now," she told him. "I'm going to school to learn how to use my magic. I want you to know something."

He turned around. The tip of her wand brushed against his Adam's apple. "Margret Anne, you need to go to bed right now."

"Remember when I threw you into the wall?"

He stopped, eyes wide.

"I never want to see you again, but I will settle for you never touching me again."

She turned her back and walked away. When she had made it halfway to the door, her father got his voice back. "I guess it didn't work, taking you in, taking you away from the heathens." Margret Anne whirled around, eyes narrowed, but he didn't stop talking. "We raised you in a good British Christian family, and you still-"

Margret Anne cut him off. "The professor who showed us around today, he's English."

He stared at her wand defiantly. "You're going to hell, Margret Anne."

"Yeah well, you're definitely going there too." She gripped her wand tight. "And in the meantime, I've got magic, and you don't, and you are never going to touch me again, alright?"

When he finally nodded, she swept away, and closed her bedroom door behind her. She slid down to the floor, breathing hard, glee mingling, now that she was alone again, with that same old fear.


End file.
